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Background: Migration of adult children may impact the health of aging parents who remain in low- and middle-income countries. Prior studies have uncovered mixed associations between adult child migration status and physical functioning of older parents; none to our knowledge has examined the impact on unmet caregiving needs.

Methods: Data come from a population-based study of Mexican adults > 50 years. We used longitudinal targeted maximum likelihood estimation to estimate associations between having an adult child US migrant and lower-body functional limitations, and both needs and unmet needs for assistance with basic or instrumental activities of daily living (ADLs/IADLs) for 11806 respondents surveyed over an 11-year period.

Acknowledgments: The Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) is funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging (R01AG018016, R Wong, PI) and the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) in Mexico. JMT is supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging (K01AG056602, J Torres, PI). KER is supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse (K99DA042127, K Rudolph, PI). OS is supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R01AI074345-07). MMG is supported by the National Institutes of Health and Aging (RF1AG05548601, MM Glymour and A Zeki Al Hazzouri, Multi-PI). LCW is supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging (K24AG041180).

No conflicts of interest to declare.

The data are publicly available for download at mhasweb.org; sample code for longitudinal Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation and sensitivity analysis are provided in the supplemental files. Further code (e.g. to set up all of the variables, for multiple imputation procedures) is available upon request.